Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much public funding was provided to air ambulance organisations in each of the last five years.
Answered by Philip Dunne
Air ambulance services are independent charities, and do not receive direct funding from the Department of Health or NHS England. Local air ambulance charities may receive resources from ambulance trusts or other National Health Service bodies but information on these NHS resources is not held centrally.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the changes to the modelling of the recording of hospital admissions attributed to alcohol in the last 10 years; and what steps his Department is taking to reduce such admissions.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
Alcohol-related hospital admissions are used as a way of understanding the impact of alcohol on the health of a population. Public Health England (PHE) uses two main measures for reporting alcohol-related hospital admissions:
- narrow measure: where an alcohol-related disease, injury or condition was the primary reason for a hospital admission or an alcohol-related external cause was recorded in a secondary diagnosis field; and
- more recently a broader measure has been developed which measures pressures from alcohol on health systems. For this indicator, the alcohol-attributable fractions are applied in order to estimate the number of admissions rather than the number of people.
PHE publishes this data and provides tailored data packs for each local authority to support their local decision making to reduce alcohol-related harm and help to reduce alcohol-related hospital admissions.
Nationally, there are a range of actions underway to tackle alcohol harm, and which aim to prevent alcohol-related hospital admissions. These include:
- a new national programme to incentivise screening and provide appropriate interventions to all in patients in National Health Service hospitals is being rolled out over the next two years;
- many Sustainability and Transformation Plan footprint areas have used PHE’s menu of preventative interventions to guide their decisions on local action to reduce alcohol harm and hospital admissions; and
- more widely, PHE’s One You campaign includes tools to help those people who want to reduce their consumption of alcohol, and the NHS Health Check continues to promote interventions to reduce harm and offer alcohol treatment for people who need help to recover from dependence.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many consumers and organisations have made representations on the Chief Medical Officer's revised guidelines on alcohol consumption.
Answered by Jane Ellison
We have received 1,017 responses to the UK Chief Medical Officers’ alcohol guidelines consultation, including responses as part of a campaign and responses that did not answer some or any of the specific consultation questions.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many EU member states have adopted guidance recommending the same level of weekly alcohol consumption for men and women.
Answered by Jane Ellison
No other European country has carried out a full scientific review of their alcohol guidelines at least in the last ten years.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the Chief Medical Officer's revised guidelines on alcohol consumption on consumer behaviour.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The National Institute for Health Research has awarded funding to The University of Sheffield Alcohol Research Group to evaluate the new drinking guidelines. The details will be worked through once the conclusions of the consultation are published.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he plans to adopt the recommendations made by the Chief Medical Officer on the consumption of alcohol.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ alcohol guidelines give the public the latest and most up to date scientific information so that they can make informed decisions about their own drinking.
Asked by: Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will publish all responses received to the Chief Medical Officer's consultation on the revised alcohol guidelines.
Answered by Jane Ellison
As with all consultations of this sort, individual responses to consultations are treated as confidential so not usually published.
However, the Department will provide a summary of all the responses for each of the consultation questions in the Government response to the advice that the UK Chief Medical Officers’ guidance.